Photos by Bill Goldschmidt. Text by Quinn Youngs.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — This year was a special St. Patrick’s Day in Tipperary Hill.
As the story goes, when the traffic light in the Tipp Hill neighborhood was first installed back in the 1920s, the green light being on the bottom enraged some Irish-American kids, patriotic to their ethnic mother country. Green meant Ireland, and red meant Britain, the kids argued; in an Irish neighborhood, green goes on top.
In protest, they engaged in one of the most Irish lobbying efforts in city history: they threw stones at the street light until 1926, when the city government budged and replaced it with a green-on-top light.
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“Tipperary Hill challenged the status quo,” Syracuse mayor Sharon Owens said at a St. Patrick’s Day event honoring the kids who became known as the “stone throwers.”
“Some may say that these young men were vandals,” Pat Driscoll, a descendent of a stone thrower Jacko Behan, said. “Yet it was their undying advocacy and loyalty to their Irish heritage that led city leaders to make a permanent change the only traffic light in our country where the green remains on top of the red.”
The neighborhood prides its Irish heritage, especially the story of the stone throwers. A statue of stone throwers as well as the street light itself act as landmarks dedicated to the legend, but the neighborhood association wanted something more, something to make sure that those who go by the light know exactly what its significance means to Tipp Hill.
Janice McKenna, the president of the Tipperary Hill Neighborhood Association, reached out to the William G. Pomeroy Foundation about making a historical marker explaining the green-on-top street light. Given that the tale of the stone throwers has persisted through oral storytelling rather than the written record, the sign actually commemorates the story as part of the organization’s “Legends & Lore” series, which is dedicated to local folklore.
Good enough, the neighbors thought, as long as it was an Irish green rather than the series’ red signs. Now, Tipp Hill not only has the only green-on-top street light in the world, but the only green “Legends & Lore” sign among the Pomeroy plaques…